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When disaster strikes, your backup and replication solutions need to provide
simple and automated recovery to get your physical and virtual servers back up and
running as soon as possible. Dell AppAssure is a data protection solution that provides
enterprise-class backup, replication, and recovery features for both virtual and physical
systems running Microsoft Windows or Linux operating systems and supports a
number of hypervisors.
We gathered publicly available information on Dell AppAssure and compared it
to information available for several popular backup and replication solutions. We found
that Dell AppAssure offers many of the competitors enterprise-geared features to the
small to medium-sized business segment, right out of the box. Dell AppAssure supports
a variety of operating systems, offers a flexible cost model, and leverages a scalable
architecture that provides data protection and rapid recovery across geographically
dispersed sites.
SEPTEMBER 2015
THE FACTS
Out-of-box features
IT departments need key out-of-the-box features to make backup management
easy. Dell AppAssure comes with a variety of features that enhance the protection and
recovery of crucial data as part of the initial installation or require only minimal setup
from IT staff.
Recovery options
Virtual Standby. The Dell AppAssure Core provides users with standby virtual
machines (VMs) for physical or virtual protected machines. These VMs are incrementally
updated in a ready-to-start state to minimize potential downtime.1 Simply select the
target machine in the AppAssure console, create a Virtual Standby, and select the
volumes you want to have available in the standby virtual machine. The target machine
will be backed up, and the data will be available in the Virtual Standby, ready as soon as
you power it on.
Symantec NetBackup2 and Veeam3 dont offer a virtual standby option, but
both offer a feature that mounts a VM on an NFS share hosted on the media server.
Once the NFS share is created and mounted on a known hypervisor, the backed-up VM
is restored and can be migrated to the production cluster. While this process is fast, its
not instantand its supported only for virtual machines. With Symantec NetBackup,
you can restore a physical machine to virtual machine using a traditional recovery
method, but Veeam offers no means of backup for physical servers.
Like NetBackup and Veeam, Unitrends Enterprise Backup provides technologies
such as VMware vSphere Instant Recovery and Microsoft Hyper-V Instant Recovery.4
In the case of vSphere Instant Recovery, Unitrends requires a VMware ESXi server
capable of Storage vMotion as the recovery target.5
Unitrends Enterprise Backup also offers virtual standby features similar to
AppAssure, but only for Windows servers. Dell supports both Windows and Linux
servers for Virtual Standby.6
Verified Recovery. Dell AppAssure offers Verified Recovery,7 a method for
ensuring your backups for Microsoft Exchange SQL Server, or SharePoint are useable,
http://software.dell.com/documents/virtual-standby-in-the-real-world-with-appassure-technicalbrief-29891.pdf
https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.TECH211113.html
3
http://www.veeam.com/high-speed-vm-recovery.html#Instant-VM-Recovery
4
http://www.unitrends.com/solutions/recovery-solutions/how-we-recover/
5
http://www.unitrends.com/documents/administratorsguide/user_manual/protecting_vmware/prerequisites_for_implementing_vmware_instant_recovery.htm#XREF_65122_Prerequisite
s_for
6
http://software.dell.com/documents/virtual-standby-in-the-real-world-with-appassure-technicalbrief-29891.pdf
7
https://software.dell.com/docs/dell-appassure-verified-recovery-technicalbrief-15771.pdf
2
https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.TECH18698.html
http://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/80/vsphere/surebackup_hiw_vm.html
10
http://www.unitrends.com/documents/administrators-guide/
11
http://software.dell.com/documents/dell-appassure-live-recovery-technicalbrief-24348.pdf
12
http://www.veeam.com/blog/recovery-possibilities-in-depth-volume-recovery.html
13
http://software.dell.com/documents/dell-appassure-universal-recovery-technicalbrief-24347.pdf
9
hardware or differing hypervisors.14 This means AppAssure can recover physical servers
to virtual machines or virtual machines to physical machines when disaster strikes.
As of version 7.6, Symantec NetBackup provides the ability to create virtual
machines directly from a client backup.15 Unitrends UEB uses technology called
Unitrends Bridge to perform P2V and V2P functions for Windows servers. Due to its
virtualization-only model, Veeam Backup & Replication v8 does not support the
recovery or backup of non-virtualized infrastructure except for end-user devices using
Veeam Endpoint Backup.16
Cloud Archive. Dell AppAssure enables organizations to use Microsoft Azure,
Amazon S3, Rackspace, and OpenStack private clouds for archival targets.17 This
allows customers to leverage inexpensive, remote storage for long-term data retention.
In addition, any cloud provider used for hosting AppAssure Cores can be used
for cloud-based replication.18 Leveraging a cloud provider as a replication target helps
minimize the effect of disasters by providing varied replication targets and storage
locations.19 Dell offers an AppAssure Replication Target VM for Microsoft Azure
(available through the Azure Marketplace with a no-cost license for AppAssure license
holders), making setup and replication to the cloud even easier.20
The other solutions offer varying levels of cloud support. Unitrends supports
their own Unitrends Cloud, Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage including Google Nearline,
and Rackspace CloudFiles,21 whereas Symantec NetBackup supports Amazon, AT&T,
Nirvanix, and Rackspace for cloud storage targets.22 Veeam offers Cloud Connect,
which leverages partners that sign up with their cloud provider program. These partners
can be found through the Veeam Cloud Provider Directory for hosting offsite cloud
repositories.23 This model requires a separate subscription with Veeam partner cloud
providers.
14
http://software.dell.com/documents/appassure-datasheet-30207.pdf
https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.HOWTO88819.html
16
http://www.veeam.com/news/veeam-announces-veeam-endpoint-backup-free-extending-protection-to-desktops-andlaptops.html
17
http://documents.software.dell.com/appassure/5.4.2/user-guide/working-with-the-appassure-5-core/managing-cloudaccounts/adding-a-cloud-account
18
http://software.dell.com/documents/dell-appassure-cloud-replication-technicalbrief-24351.pdf
19
http://software.dell.com/documents/dell-appassure-cloud-replication-technicalbrief-24351.pdf
20
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150714005113/en/Dell-Unveils-AppAssure-Replication-Target-VMMicrosoft#.Vcyy4XjSKaA
21
http://www.unitrends.com/products/enterprise-backup-software/unitrends-enterprise-backup#tab_2
22
http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/fact_sheets/b-nbu-DS-enterprise-cloud-backup-and-recovery-21281813.enus.pdf
23
http://www.veeam.com/cloud-connect.html
15
Must-have features
Figure 1 presents some of the many features that are important to a solid
backup solution. Dell AppAssure provides many features common to enterprise and
large organization backup solutions.
Feature
Deduplication
Encryption
Dell AppAssure
Unitrends Enterprise
Backup
Target, inline
Target, post-backup
AES 256-bit
AES 256-bit
AES 256-bit
Replication
Granular retention policies
Symantec
NetBackup
Source or target,
inline
Varied, includes
AES 256-bit
24
http://documents.software.dell.com/AppAssure/5.4.3/installation-and-upgrade-guide/introduction-to-appassure/productfeatures-of-appassure/true-global-deduplication
25
https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.DOC6466.html
26
http://www.unitrends.com/solutions/how-we-help/adaptive-data-deduplication
27
http://www.veeam.com/hyper-v-vmware-backup-deduplication-compression.html
28
http://documents.software.dell.com/appassure/5.4.2/user-guide/working-with-the-appassure-5-core/managing-appassure-5core-settings/understanding-deduplication-cache-size-and-storage-locations
encryption process does not affect performance because it uses hardware acceleration
specific to the multi-threaded processor on which it is deployed. Records are
independently encrypted and deduplicated, providing multi-tenant access without
compromising the integrity of any one tenants data.29
Symantec NetBackup provides AES 256-bit encryption algorithms, and offers
extensive guides for implementing these features in various use cases.30 Unitrends
Enterprise Backup includes AES-256 encryption, and offloads encryption to an onpremise appliance.31 Veeam Backup & Replication provides end-to-end AES 256-bit
encryption.32
Replication. With AppAssure, you can replicate to both self-managed and thirdparty locationsanywhere you can install an AppAssure Core can be used as a
replication target. By using multi-point replication with Dell AppAssure, users can
replicate data and VMs in a one-to-many architecture. By using chained or multi-hop
replication, users can cascade replication from a source AppAssure Core to a secondary,
and then to a tertiary AppAssure Core,33 providing multiple copies of data throughout
your distributed infrastructure. By replicating only compressed, deduplicated data,
AppAssure requires as little as one-tenth the bandwidth of a solution that replicates
uncompressed data, and uses asynchronous, continuous transfer of incremental backup
data. With a unique Read-Match-Write (RMW) replication algorithm, data transfers
occur only after the source and target systems have matched keys. Once matching is
confirmed, the compressed, encrypted, and deduplicated data is transferred.34
Symantec NetBackup manages all replication functions in the Symantec
NetBackup Replication Director, and requires the installation of a NetBackup Client for
VM replication.35 Unitrends provides for replication of data and VMs, and can be
configured for cross-replication between two appliance-based systems, though normal
UEB systems support only unidirectional replication.36 Veeam Backup & Replication
provides a warm replication site, where a backed-up VM is in a ready-to-start state,
protecting infrastructure from long downtimes.37
29
http://documents.software.dell.com/AppAssure/5.4.3/installation-and-upgrade-guide/introduction-to-appassure/productfeatures-of-appassure/encryption
30
https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.DOC6486.html
31
http://www.unitrends.com/products/enterprise-backup-software/unitrends-enterprise-backup
32
http://www.veeam.com/backup-files-encryption.html
33
http://software.dell.com/documents/dell-appassure-replication-technicalbrief-29890.pdf
34
http://documents.software.dell.com/AppAssure/5.4.3/installation-and-upgrade-guide/introduction-to-appassure/productfeatures-of-appassure/replication
35
https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.DOC6465.html
36
http://www.unitrends.com/documents/administrators-guide/index.htm#user_manual/replication/cross-replication_setup.htm
37
http://www.veeam.com/vm-advanced-replication.html
Agent or agentless?
When backup solutions have a way of tracking changes on a machine or storage
location, backups are faster and more efficient. The solution can track changes tracked
through APIs at the hypervisor level, or through small programs installed into the OS of
the machine that requires backup. In hypervisors such as VMware vSphere, Changed
Block Tracking (CBT) is a differential backup method that checks for changes to data
blocks on disks rather than changes to specific files, which allows a backup solution to
agentlessly capture changes to virtual machines.
Agentless solutions mean no resource usage in the guest OS (i.e., CPU, RAM,
disk IO) and VMs can be backed up online or offline. Agentless backup solutions
generally leverage hypervisor and OS technologies such as Microsoft Volume Snapshot
Service (VSS) or VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection. For granular restores with
CBT, you have to install an agent capable of capturing application state data in each VM.
While it is possible for an agentless solution to produce only minimal impact to
individual virtual machines, the hypervisor manager is heavily utilized during the backup
cycle for capturing and managing snapshots, which can affect hypervisor management
operations and other VMs running in the environment. This requires careful planning
and possibly implementing resource limits to restrict the number of simultaneous
backups.
Agent-based solutions use a small program installed within the backup targets
OS. The agent can perform tasks such as compression or pre-processing data for
deduplication before transmitting over the network. Agents may have features that
integrate with databases or other workloads to optimize backups and ensure snapshots
are not corrupt, providing application-aware, granular backup and recovery capabilities.
Dell AppAssure uses the agent model for supported platforms, and the Dell
AppAssure Core can deploy software agents and updates to machines.38 Dell AppAssure
Smart Agents are lightweight agents with built-in intelligence that provides higher levels
of protection than agentless backup schemes. Dell AppAssure changed block tracking
minimizes the amount of data that has to be backed up, and because its built into the
Smart Agent, can be used on physical, virtual, or cloud machines to optimize
performance. Utilizing Smart Agents means a single backup passes all the information
needed for both granular and system-level recoveries.
Symantec NetBackup, which can utilize either the agentless or the agent model,
refers to their agents as clients.39 Even with the agentless model, administrators must
still install Symantecs version of VSS provider, which provides the ability to quiesce
application data. Symantec offers multiple versions of their agent-based clients with
38
39
https://support.software.dell.com/appassure/kb/119942
http://www.symantec.com/netbackup/agents-options-add-ons/
varying feature levels and costs.40 For example, features such as snapshot-enabled
backup and restore are available in only the premium version.41 Unitrends Enterprise
Backup (UEB) is an appliance-based backup solution that uses an agent model for its
supported platforms.42
Veeam Backup & Replication is an agentless-only solution supporting Microsoft
Hyper V or VMware vSphere. Veeam does not support physical servers. 43
Supported platforms
Workloads often run on different operating systems, hypervisors, and hardware,
so backup solutions must support a wide range of guest operating systems and
virtualization platforms.
System requirements
Dell AppAssure comes either as a software installer, which requires a dedicated
64-bit Microsoft Windows machine, or as a physical appliance. While AppAssure can run
in a virtual machine, for performance reasons, Dell recommends that installations
protecting more than 10 agents run on a physical machine.
Symantec NetBackup is supported as both a Linux-based physical appliance or
as a virtual or physical server running on Windows, Linux, and Unix server operating
systems.44 However, running NetBackup as a VM can affect certain features.45
Unitrends Enterprise Backup comes as either a prepackaged virtual or physical
appliance or an installable Linux application. The virtual appliance comes packaged for
both Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere, and the installable application supports
Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS. Unitrends supports Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware
vSphere, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).46
Veeam Backup & Replication requires a Microsoft Windows-based machine,
either physical or virtual. Veeam supports the 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2012
and 2012 R2, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and SP2, Windows 8, and Windows 7 SP1.47
To support the widest range of file systems (including ReFS), Veeam recommends
installing to Windows Server 2012 R2.
Platform support
Dell AppAssure supports virtual standbys on VMware vSphere, Microsoft HyperV, and Oracle VirtualBox. Agents are available for Microsoft Windows-based machines
40
http://www.insight.com/insightweb/products/Symantec-NetBackup-Standard-Client--v.-7.6--license/FTPTXZF0-ZZZES
http://www.symantec.com/netbackup/agents-options-add-ons/
42
http://www.unitrends.com/support/resources/latest-agent-releases
43
http://www.veeam.com/vm-backup-recovery-replication-software.html
44
http://www.symantec.com/netbackup/system-requirements/
45
https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.TECH127089.html
46
http://www.unitrends.com/products/enterprise-backup-software/unitrends-enterprise-backup
47
http://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/80/vsphere/
41
(including Server Core editions) and many Linux distributions.48 Installation guides for
agents are available for Ubuntu, RHEL & CentOS, and SUSE. Administrators can deploy
agents manually to each machine, or deploy them in bulk using AppAssure Core Console
Tools.
Symantec supports VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, IBM VIO Server, HP-UX
Integrity VM, and Oracle VM hypervisors,49 with an increased feature set for Microsoft
Hyper-V and VMware vSphere.50 Supported operating systems include HP-UX, Solaris,
IBM AIX, Microsoft Windows Server 2003/2008/2008 R2/2012/2012 R2, Red Hat
Enterprise Linux, Oracle Linux, FreeBSD, CentOS, and Apple OS X.51 Bare-metal
backup and recovery are also supported.52
Unitrends Enterprise Backup protects a variety of operating systems, including
Windows Server, Windows Client, Linux, OSX, IBM pSeries/AIX, and FreeBSD.53 UEB also
supports bare-metal backup by converting physical workloads to virtual ones using
Unitrends Bridge, Unified Bare Metal, and other proprietary technologies.
Veeam Backup & Replication supports only VMware vSphere and Microsoft
Hyper-V virtualization environments. Veeam supports the 6.X, 5.X, and 4.X versions of
vSphere. Certain disk configurations lack support; these include virtual disks that share a
SCSI bus and disks available by in-guest SCSI initiators. All guest OSes supported by
VMware vSphere are supported by Veeam Backup & Replication. Veeam supports hosts
running Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, and
Microsoft Hyper-V Server. Like VMware vSphere support, Veeam does not support inguest iSCSI initiators or network shares.
48
http://software.dell.com/products/appassure/
http://www.symantec.com/netbackup/system-requirements/
50
https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.DOC8623.html
51
https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.TECH59978.html
52
https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.DOC6472.html
53
http://www.unitrends.com/solutions/what-we-protect/operating-systems
49
Yes*
Unitrends
Enterprise Backup
Symantec
NetBackup
Yes*
Dell AppAssure
CONCLUSION
Thanks to crucial features such as Virtual Standby, which gets data back into
production quickly; Live Recovery, which prioritizes the data you need for recovery first;
and Verified Recovery, which ensures data is intact, IT teams can rely on Dell AppAssure.
Because it offers support for both physical and virtual environments and a broad
selection of OSes and hypervisors, Dell AppAssure can ensure that businesses are ready
if disaster strikes. Dell AppAssure offers an attractive mix of features and options that
could make it the right choice to back up and protect your organizations data.